Tuesday January 11 - Vancouver Canucks at Florida Panthers - 4 p.m. PT
It's game day!
If all goes according to plan for these next few hours, the Vancouver Canucks should be getting back into action against the Florida Panthers on Tuesday afternoon.
With Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson and Jason Dickinson all back in the mix, here's how the lines rolled for practice in Sunrise on Monday:
Of course, Bruce Boudreau's 8-0-1 streak with the Canucks is on the line on Tuesday night. The Canucks will be coming off a 10-day layoff. Their last game was the 5-2 win in Seattle on New Year's Day.
Can we glean anything about how the Canucks will respond from Monday night's game between the Kraken and the Colorado Avalanche? Seattle also hadn't played since facing the Canucks on Jan. 1. The Kraken came out with a solid effort in Denver — building a 3-1 lead before the Avs turned up the heat and grabbed the 4-3 regulation win. No points, but perhaps a bit of a moral victory for Seattle?
The Canucks, of course, won't be satisfied unless they can pick up a point or two against a very good Florida team that has been virtually unbeatable on home ice this year. Though they're only at 35 games played in total, the Panthers are halfway through their home schedule, with a record of 18-3-0 for 36 of a possible 42 points at the renamed FLA Live Arena in Sunrise.
That's tops in the league. No other team has won more than 14 games on home ice so far.
Out of those three home losses, two came under extremely difficult circumstances, too. The Panthers were decimated by Covid and injuries before their holiday pause, when the fell to the Los Angeles Kings and Ottawa Senators.
They've already played six games since coming back from the holiday break, and are 5-0-1, with the only loss coming in a shootout in Dallas last Thursday. They followed that up with an impressive 4-3 overtime win in Carolina on Friday.
With 51 points, the Panthers are tied with the Tampa Bay Lightning for first overall in the league as they prepare to face Vancouver.
They're relatively healthy now: Patric Hornqvist and Spencer Knight are currently on the Covid list, while Sam Reinhart has just come off, and Sam Bennett is back from his three-game suspension.
Here's how the Panthers rolled their forwards at Tuesday's morning skate. Yes, they're so good and so deep that they have five lines!
Jameson Olive, the Panthers' website writer, is also reporting that Sergei Bobrovsky will likely get the nod in the goal — and that Olli Juolevi is expected to draw in on the blue line.
Since he was traded to the Panthers at the beginning of the season, Juolevi has appeared in just five games for Florida. He's pointless, with a minus-3, averaging just under 10 minutes a game when he has played.
His
transaction page for the year looks very Juolevi-esque. Visa issues, an undisclosed injury, two conditioning assignments with the AHL Charlotte Checkers and, of course, the requisite bout of Covid, which he came out of last week.
He played in the four games before Christmas, when Florida's lineup was heavily depleted, and in last week's loss in Dallas.
So — at this point, it's not looking like the Canucks gave up on him too soon, or like he can hold a candle to the other one-time Canuck who has established himself as a staple in Florida's top four.
Gustav Forsling is averaging 21:19 a game on the Panthers' defense this season and is a plus-15. And though he hasn't scored, he has 18 assists in 30 games — just eight fewer than Quinn Hughes.
Juho Lammikko, the key player acquired by the Canucks in the Juyolevi deal, has established himself as a fourth-line regular since his arrival in Vancouver. He was healthy scratched for the last five games of Travis Green's tenure, but has been back in the mix since Bruce Boudreau arrived. With the exception of the two games that he missed while in Covid protocol, Lammikko's ice time has been on the rise under Boudreau, too.
I'm curious to see which player will come out on top in Tuesday's 'revenge game.'
As far as his game plan goes, Boudreau told the Vancouver media on Monday that he's going to try to keep the high-octane Panthers under control.
"Since I’ve been here, we haven’t met a team like Florida. You just have to be leery,"
he said. "They want to (trade) chance for chance and hopefully that’s not the way we’re going to play, or anticipate playing."
Elias Pettersson said he was symptom free while he was in his brief Covid protocol. He sounds like he's raring to go.
“I did an extra skate after the practice today, so hopefully my legs will feel good," he said. "We’re very excited. Seattle (Jan. 1 game) was a long time ago and it's a good feeling in the group."
Meanwhile, Brock Boeser and Jason Dickinson could be more rusty. Boeser has been off for nearly a month — his last game was Dec. 16 — while Dickinson's last game was in L.A. on Dec. 30; he tested positive before the New Year's Day game in Seattle.
According to Boeser, Phil di Giuseppe and Justin Dowling are still in Vancouver, and are expected to be in quarantine until Wednesday.
Boeser, of course, had been the player with the hot hand at the beginning of Boudreau's tenure, with five goals and two assists in six games before he was sidelined.
Boudreau said he'd been asking players to shoot more, and Boeser responded with 20 shots in those six games, averaging 3.33 shots a game.
During the 22 games under Travis Green earlier in the season, Boeser had 56 shots on goal, which works out to just over 2.5 shots per game.
In addition to the improvement in volume, his accuracy also ticked up nicely. Five goals on 20 shots is an easy-to-calculate 25% shooting percentage. Four goals on 56 shots earlier in the year was just 7.14%.
Boeser's career shooting percentage is 11.3%. But he was at an impressive 16.3% when he scored 23 goals last season. So his numbers under Boudreau aren't *that* much of an outlier, but he probably will need some time to get back in the groove after his long layoff.
And there should be some opportunity for the Canucks to score on Tuesday. Though Sergei Bobrvosky is enjoying a bounce-back season, the Panthers' high-scoring style leaves room for him to make the occasional gaffe. For the year, Bobrovsky has a 2.57 goals-against average and .917 save percentage. But those numbers have been ticking upward — over the last month, he has allowed three goals or more in five of his last seven starts.
If Thatcher Demko has taken advantage of rest and practice time and can come out sharp, the Canucks have a strong opportunity to win Tuesday's goaltending battle. As for the rest — we'll see.
Enjoy the game!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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